Paintball appears to have originated as a method for farmers and ranchers to quickly and effectively mark tress and livestock. A paintball is a sphere filled with one of several colors of paint, contained by a hard, semi-brittle surface that breaks upon contact with another surface. The paintballs are shot out of a paintball gun, which is also called a “marker”. An air canister attached to the paintball gun supplies the power to propel the paintball up to several hundred yards, although the effective range is usually under 150 feet, and the ideal distance to target is less than 80 feet, at a velocity around 190 mph.
During the early 1980's, it became an organized activity during which teams of paintball players would hunt one another in either an indoor or outdoor paintball arena. In paintball games the object is to shoot a player on the opposing team such that your paintball bursts or breaks on his/her clothing or paintball gun, creating an obvious stain. All persons so marked by a paint splatter over a certain size (usually the size of a quarter) are supposed to put their paintball gun in the air and walk off the playing field.
By the end of the 1980's there were a number of paintball arenas throughout the world, ranging in quality from carefully designed indoor locations to cordoned-off outdoor lots where the only protection from enemy fire were naturally growing trees and naturally occurring hills and valleys. The goals of paintball games also expanded, from an initial “capture the flag” approach to the currently popular goal of shooting every member of the opposing team before they shoot every member of your team, commonly referred to as “elimination”.
As the playing fields, rules, and cash prizes for paintball competitions have grown, there have been concurrent advances in the technology. Two of the major areas of improvement from the beginning have been to a) decrease the target size of a paintball player by making accessories small and/or locating them in front of or behind the person (as opposed to having accessories hang to the side of the player, thereby increasing the player's silhouette and target size), and b) facilitate a rapid re-supply of paintballs to the paintball gun.
An average paintball gun can only store around 200 paintballs in its hopper, depending upon the size of the hopper. It should be noted that the larger the hopper, the larger the target presented to an opponent since the hopper typically sits directly on top of the gun. One of the main goals in improving paintball gear is to decrease the effective target size a player presents so that it is more difficult to hit him or her with a shot paintball. Thus, once a user has exhausted the hopper, he/she needs to replenish the paintballs. There have been invented a number of ways to accomplish this, the most common being the use of paintball “pods”, which currently come in sizes of 100 and 140 paintballs. Prior methods of storing pods include placing them on belt loops. This method has obvious drawbacks: if the pods are placed on a person's hips, they will effectively increase the target area, thereby rendering a user more likely to get shot; if the pods are attached to the front or back, a user increases the chances of crushing the paintballs by falling on them. There is an additional problem in cases where the pods are placed in a holder or belt that stores the pods behind the player's back: namely, that it is time consuming, difficult, and anatomically uncomfortable to have to reach behind one's back to retrieve a pod
There have also been methods suggested whereby a positive feed system will force a paintball into the chamber for firing, however few of these systems have done more than merely trying to eliminate jams at the bottom of a hopper—the paintball player is still limited by the size of the hopper and the number (and ease of access) of paintball pods he/she carries during a game of paintball. One force feed device which is out on the market takes paintballs out of the hopper, via gravity, and force feeds them into the chamber. This device, however, also increases the target profile presented by the user and still relies on gravity to get the ball from the hopper to the chamber. Another product on the market uses the actual pod as the hopper, and locates the pod beneath the paintball gun whereupon the paintballs are transported up to the gun through a unique spring/spiral combination. This device, however, still locates the hopper, or pod in this case, in a location where the player's target profile is enlarged by having an additional device in front of the player. Additionally, this pod/hopper only holds 100 paintballs, requiring a player to frequently reload or replace the pod/hopper, and both of these options require the player to carry additional pods or reloading, or pod/hoppers for replacing and empty pod/hopper.
Since decreasing a player's target size is a major goal of paintball innovations, it should be noted that in the majority of paintball games, a hit on the hopper counts as a hit, which removes that player from the game. This is particularly important when a player is firing from behind a barrier, as the hopper becomes visible (and therefore a target) to opposing players before the gun is raised to a position from which it can fire. Thus, an invention which does away with a hopper located above the actual gun would be highly advantageous to both the recreational and tournament paintball player.
An additional problem with the use of paintball hoppers is that paintballs can jam in the hopper exit, thereby stopping a paintball enthusiast's game until he/she can open the hopper and remove the jam, or takes the time to shake the gun in the hopes of removing the jam. Thus, there exists a long-felt need for a reliable system by which a continuous supply of paintballs can be loaded in the chamber of a paintball gun for rapid firing in a manner which is not dependant upon gravity and allows a paintball player to effectively reload his/her gun from any position without the need to first stop firing before reloading.
A final problem with the current paintball gun arrangement in many models is that the air canister is located just below the handle of the gun, thereby increasing the target size of the user and the effective size of the gun. Since decreasing a user's silhouette will decrease the chances of his/her being hit, it is advantageous to locate the air canister in a location where it will be “hidden” from an opposing player.
The current invention provides a simple, cost-effective solution to both of these problems: a paintball backpack hopper that presents a much smaller target than do other means of providing replacement paintballs, and does so with positive force, thereby substantially decreasing the likelihood of a jam at the bottom of the hopper. By providing a supply of around 1,000 paintballs—a number well above that used by the average recreational paintball user during a game—the user can devote all of his/her attention to shooting other players and avoid being shot first, and doesn't need to divert his/her attention to reloading.